Author Mike Marsh with a 35-pound Sutton Lake flathead. Biologists would like to see more of these big flatheads removed. Photo by Mike Marsh

Anglers who fish at Sutton Lake find solitude and quiet. There are no personal watercraft, water skis or boaters out for Sunday pleasure cruises to destroy the serenity with their droning motor noises and rolling boat wakes. When the 850-acre lake was filled, many of the existing trees were left standing, leaving treacherous obstacles in the paths of boaters who like to lay heavy hands on their throttles.

While bass fishermen and anglers dunking worms for panfish rule the water by day, a few secretive souls sneak away from the public access ramp at dusk. Their gear is on the super-beefy side for largemouth bass. (In fact, it's actually more like the saltwater gear that most of them already own because of the lake's proximity to the Atlantic Ocean.)

Catfish are what they are after and Sutton Lake has several species of them lurking beneath logjams, waterlogged cypress trees and deep channels along the lake's dikes. Anytime anyone casts something with a hook into the lake, they may come up with a big surprise when a channel or flathead catfish pounds it, whether the bait they're using is natural or an artificial, such as a crankbait or spinner. But those who head for the lake at night do so with purpose -- finding big catfish on the prowl.

Sutton Lake was originally called "Catfish Lake" by anglers because the major creek bed that was inundated was named Catfish Creek. The name was, in fact, a foreshadowing of what was in store once the lake was filled by pumping water from the Cape Fear River in 1972.

Several native species of catfish were in the creek as it was flooded, including white catfish, snail bullheads, yellow bullheads, brown bullheads and flat bullheads. Non-native channel catfish were also already in the Cape Fear River system and were likely trapped when the lake was completed.

A more recently introduced species is the flathead catfish. This predatory catfish reaches huge sizes in the lake and feeds on other catfish, as well as all species of panfish.

"We first noticed juvenile flathead catfish in our sampling in 1993," said Reid Garrett, Senior Environmental Specialist with Progress Energy -- Carolinas.

Progress Energy owns Sutton Lake. The lake's principal purpose is providing cooling water for the L.V. Sutton generating plant located on the southern side of the lake. A central dike divides the lake and several wing dikes extend from it and from the shoreline. This provides a long flow path, allowing hot water that is discharged into the lake to cool so it can be re-circulated through the power plant.

The arrival of flathead catfish was greeted with trepidation by biologists, and most likely occurred when an angler with good intentions introduced them into the lake. But no one knows for certain how the flatheads made their way into the lake. Biologists found the flatheads while sampling the lake and became alarmed, believing the bigger catfish had eaten or displaced the more desirable channel catfish and the native species in the lake.

By 2003, biologists estimated that over 1,000 large flathead catfish lived in the lake. But current sampling techniques no longer include rotenone, a poisoning technique that first turned up juvenile flatheads. All sampling now is through electrofishing, which does not provide as good a picture of the catfish population.

Initially biologists with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and Progress Energy became alarmed when channel catfish disappeared from their samples. Flathead catfish are voracious predators and small catfish are one of their primary prey species.